Social Collateral and consumer payment media during the economic crisis in Europe

In this research paper we investigate the relationship between economic crises and the changes in levels of social collateral, as well as the indirect changes in the use of payment media from consumers as a result of the latter. The scene is Europe in 2015 and the Eurozone crisis involving countries mostly hit form the crisis: Greece, Cyprus and to a lesser extent Spain, versus less affected economies like Sweden and UK. We use and analyse questions focusing on social collateral, taken from a much broader research instrument - a questionnaire with 54 questions that have been used in a series of studies focusing in the use of payment media during 2015. From a total of 1003 gathered questionnaires a comparative analysis is performed through time and space focusing on three periods: before the start of the crisis in 2008, after that, and during the last 12 months; in terms of geographical dispersion, the aforementioned five countries are researched. Our empirical results provide some preliminary evidence indicating an heterogeneous behaviour among the five countries under investigation, as well as a clear change over time - partially explained by the impact of the crisis.